Generous Chrysler Foundation grant helps top students

The Chrysler Corp. Foundation on Monday presented a $17,500 check to Warren Consolidated Schools’ Butcher Educational Center to help launch an experimental project into outer space.

The foundation, a private group at Chrysler, provided start-up funding for a project being overseen by Mark Supal, interdisciplinary studies

teacher at the Macomb Mathematics Science Technology Center in Warren.

He said the project has excited students about careers in engineering and the technical field, which Brian Glowiak of Chrysler said he was glad to hear.

Brian Walmsley, chief financial officer for Warren Consolidated Public Schools, said the grant will allow Macomb County students to compete on a national level and put their knowledge on a level playing field against other students throughout the country.

Glowiak said the foundation’s donation was the right thing to do because the recipients are tomorrow’s

teachers. The foundation is 60 years old and Chrysler donates money for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to schools.

“At least in this instance the students won’t have to worry about the money,” Walmsley said. “The school had to be able to raise $22,500 to send their experiment into outer space and Chrysler came in with a generous donation when they fell short.”

Supal said his students will work on an experimental module consisting of a small piece of tubing. They will work on three projects and one will be sent to Cape Canaveral, Fla, where it will accompany a rocket into outer space.

“The students have to come up with an experiment inside the tubing that will be shot up on a space capsule into space,” Supal said. “Our program brings mathematics and science together and this experiment the students are working on is designed to be done inside of the tubing.”

Supal said the project targets what is important to astronauts in space. For example, he said, the students are testing what antiseptics work on earth and in outer space. When the tube is sent into outer space experiments on similar tubes will be done in the classroom simultaneously.

“The kids bounce ideas off of each other,” Supal said.

Mathematics teacher Christine Dewey said she is excited about the project because students who are proficient in mathematics work with students who are gifted in science.

Principal Catherine Neuhoff said there are 288 students in the Macomb Mathematics, Science and Technology Center, 185 students

at Warren Community High and another 50 at North Star Academy.

“The kids have great ideas,” Dewey said. “They all work together.”

There are 10 other schools in the United States doing the same thing, she added.